


on against

by reogulus



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Ambiguity, Canon Compliant, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25701199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/pseuds/reogulus
Summary: written for thesensory prompt"Kendall/Shiv - 6. the coldness of a piece of jewelry you just put on against your skin"
Relationships: Kendall Roy/Siobhan "Shiv" Roy
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26





	on against

Shiv gets the call at six in the morning. She sees Kendall’s name flashing on the too-bright screen of her phone, and curses under her breath before she picks up.

“Jesus Christ, Kendall, it’s six in the morning.”

“Mom shipped it, uh, to me,” Kendall’s voice comes at her, mixed with the ambience noises of party music and the sounds of people talking in the background. God fucking knows where he is and what he’s doing right now, they haven’t really talked since Austerlitz. “The box of heirlooms, the jewelry. She wants me to make sure you know what you’re gonna wear,” the words are slurred out and then interrupted by a fit of coughs, “for the wedding.”

“Right, I know,” Shiv sits up, the sheets and mattress shift with her movement. Tom lets out a sleepy sigh and moves his arm slightly, but he doesn’t wake up. “That sounds like mom. Where are you?”

“Yeah, I know. It’s ‘cause you don’t have a sister and she would never put Rome on this. I’m going back to New York on Wednesday.” He’s obviously high as a kite at some drug den party but that doesn’t stop him from evading her only question. If Shiv can go back to sleep again, maybe she can trick herself into forgetting this call ever happened.

“Fine, see you on Wednesday.”

“She’s got a surprise for you, Shiv,” Kendall laughs, the sound of it low, rough and pointed—and just like that, it takes Shiv back to that disastrous night in Connor’s kitchen, sending a shiver down her spine despite the warmth of her bed. Then the call disconnects; she puts her phone back on the nightstand, knowing full well that sleep has all but abandoned her.

Her brothers—born of the same mother—both know of her fear of their mother. Roman likes to say it as a punchline when they argue about certain things just to escalate whatever fight they’d already started. And Kendall talks to Shiv about her and mom about as often as Shiv talks to Kendall about him and dad, which is to say rarely, if ever, and usually only when something has already gone wrong.

Kendall shows up at her apartment, 3pm sharp on Wednesday. Shiv wasn’t sure that he would keep the date until the doorman called, five minutes ago.

“Hey sis,” Kendall calls her that only when he’s manic, or hiding something, or both. Shiv smiles, nods, gives him a quick hug after he sets down the mahogany box that looks a hundred times older than any other fixture she has in this apartment. It’s a cold, overcast day in February, the living room is filled with the bleak, harsh daylight of an overcast winter day that brings no cheer with it. There’s a five o’clock shadow on Kendall’s chin to match with the dark circles that droop under his eyes. He looks like shit, but with a sharpness in his eyes that says he is aware of it and he doesn’t give a fuck. Experience and history show that dad hates him the most when he’s like this.

“How’s the wedding prep coming along?” Kendall asks, like he cares to know.

“Uh, Charlotte is looking over my vows for final edits. We’ll finalize this weekend.” The truth is that her wedding planner is doing the first pass of her vows and she will look it over this weekend, and that would be that. “And what do you think Mom’s playing at?”

“Oh,” Kendall points vaguely in the direction of the box on the counter, his eyes fixed on the floor. He doesn’t so much as glance at it, as if he’s not the one who just put it there. “Dunno. Didn’t open it. Are you at least gonna offer me a drink first?”

“Well, I’m not sure what I can offer you, you know, conscionably.”

A beat of silence passes. Kendall nods with his eyes downcast, still. “Point taken,” he then beelines for the liquor cart on the far side. He picks up a bottle of scotch without hesitation, as Shiv watches with some complicated mix of concern and curiosity. “You didn’t call me back on Christmas morning.”

“No—we were at dad’s for the whole day, Marcia made us lock our phones away and we weren’t allowed to talk about…” Shiv takes a deep breath. Kendall has poured himself three fingers of scotch and downed half of it in one long gulp, before she’s even finished talking. “You, and the lawsuits, and whatever the fuck else Sandy’s tabloids and TV programs are spewing about us. Mostly we just weren’t allowed to talk about you.”

“Uh-huh,” Kendall nods again, the tiniest smile hanging on the corners of his lips, which is grating on Shiv more than she cares to admit. “Well, okay. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, very, uh, belated,” he says as he raises the glass to her, as if a toast, then downs the rest of the drink.

They haven’t seen each other since Austerlitz, the beginning of December. It’s now the third Wednesday of February. He says that, as if none of that time has passed at all. She can’t get a read on it. So that’s what it’ll be then, doing small talk across her kitchen counter with their mother’s antique box sitting pretty between them, a literal black box paired with a figurative one.

“Thanks, Ken. Same to you. How was your holiday?” and with that, Shiv moves to pour a drink for herself. It’s barely 3:30pm, but fuck it. She already knows she will not get anything else done today.

“It happened, it passed. It was fine.”

Shiv cocks her head with a smile, “Thanks for that vivid picture you painted for me.”

“Anyways, mom called and said she’s shipping me this, so,” Kendall puts down the empty glass, circles back to the jewelry box. “She said she knows about what happened, Roman told her everything, and she’s sorry that we’re both on the outs this year, so she thinks it would be a good idea for me to be a part of this. She said it must be rough, but maybe it’s good that dad’s not coming, because…you’d actually have all the eyes on you at the wedding.”

Shiv raises her eyebrows, sets her drink aside without taking a sip. “Oh, wow. She told you to say all that? To me?”

“I paraphrased,” Kendall props his elbows up on the counter, starts to fiddle with the clasps on the box. “But, you know. Yeah. she wanted me to tell you that, because she said she’s afraid that if you heard it from her, it would be uh…skewed, in your perception. Like, you’d get it twisted, somehow. No offense,” he adds the last two words. Caroline herself meant full offense, of course, and that part is just Kendall.

“Well,” Shiv takes a generous sip. The familiar smoothness and warm sting of the alcohol help to conjure something akin to comfort. She keeps a tight grip on the highball, holds it up in front of her chest as if it’s some talisman that can ward off, from the outside, the discomfort arising within her. “That sure gives me the warm fuzzies inside.”

“You wanna do the honors, bride-to-be?” The clasps come undone with two consecutive faint _clicks_ under Kendall’s fingers, and the lid bounces up. Shiv glances at the widened crack, which reveals a hint of forest green velvet inside. As with most other efforts related to the wedding, the moment she tells herself she should be excited about it, some part of her loudly proclaims in her head that it’s all bullshit.

Shiv walks over to the other side of the counter, stands next to Kendall. He smells faintly like stale smoke and coffee, no cologne or aftershave. Shiv can’t remember a time when Kendall has stayed outside long enough to actually smell like it.

He nudges the box towards her by an inch. She opens it.

The necklace is beautiful, to be sure, a green diamond nested in polished, dainty silver. Many generations of royal women on her mother’s side must have worn it as they marched into a dead end of a marriage without any vocal complaints. Women like that—people would call them demure.

“She picked a good one for you.”

“Right. Because it would, what, cost too much in shipping to actually give me options to choose from?”

Kendall chuckles. “You didn’t even pick out your wedding dress, Shiv. You hired people for all the other parts that required decision-making, anyway.”

She frowns. “Wow, that’s so not the point.”

“I know,” Kendall’s voice softens a bit. He turns to look at Shiv. “When I got married—I really thought it was gonna be different. But you don’t think that, do you?”

“I mean,” Shiv gestures vaguely to the space around them. Everything shiny and new, the fresh flowers in the glass vase, the fresh pile of kitchen towels folded next to the kitchen sink. “We’ll move into a bigger space, closer to my work. That’s a big change.”

“Come on. You know what I mean.” Something in Kendall’s voice has shifted, and Shiv feels his eyes trained on her, like he’s really looking at her. She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and turns to meet his eyes.

“I’m gonna go get a mirror, be right back.”

“Yeah, of course,” says Kendall. Before Shiv turns around, out of the corner of her eye, she sees Kendall reaching for the bottle again.

When she returns with the mirror, Kendall’s glass is half full. There’s no way to know if that’s the second or third one, or maybe the fourth. She sets the mirror down next to the box and takes the necklace out. The thin chain feels cool to the touch. The gemstone glistens under the afternoon sunlight, and it’s—nice. It’s a nice thing and she knows, and she knows that her mom knows, that it’s the perfect color to match her eyes.

“Can you,” Shiv holds it up around her neck. Kendall steps behind her and takes the chain from her hands. She looks at the top of his head in the mirror as he fastens the clasp behind her neck.

The top two buttons of her blouse are left open, as usual, but the necklace sits lower and disappears below the neckline. The silver feels too cold against her skin—frigid, even, as she tries to fight off an involuntary shiver coming up her shoulders—sitting atop her breastbone, so close to her heart.

Shiv closes her eyes for a moment. The clasp is closed, but Kendall is still standing close behind her. She draws in a deep breath; the smell of smoke lingers, but he smells more like booze than coffee now—or maybe she’s smelling it more on her own breath.

“Well?” He asks, his voice low and steady. He’s standing close enough for her to feel the hotness of his breath on the shell of her ear.

With her eyes downcast, Shiv brings her hands up to the button closest to her heart, the beat of which has quickened so much it feels frantic. She undoes it quietly, rearranges the neckline so the diamond is fully revealed in the mirror.

Kendall clears his throat before saying, “You look beautiful, Shiv.” It doesn’t, in fact, help; Shiv can still pick up the slight tremble in his voice.

“It won’t be different,” she hears herself saying, now, barely above a whisper. Her hands are balled into fists at her sides, knuckles turning white, looks at her reflection in the mirror with her eyes wide open. “Nothing will change. Getting married doesn’t change people. You were the fool, not me.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kendall says. The tremble is gone from his voice now. He rests a hand on her right shoulder, and she feels the heat of his palm through the silk of her shirt, the burn contrasts against the coolness she still feels from the necklace. And then she feels his lips on the back of her neck, right below the clasp—a ghost of a kiss, so tender it’s barely there, and gone before she can react.

“Congratulations,” he says, stepping away now. “You’re only getting married, Shiv. Everything will be fine.”

“Right,” she nods, and braces her hand around the back of her neck.

Of course, she couldn’t have known that everything was already on its way to get fucked up on her wedding day at that point in time.

“I’m sorry, Shiv, about the wedding.”

At the Summer Palace, he has the audacity to say that to her face without even looking her in the eyes. It raises the hair on the back of her neck—fortunately, her scarf is there to shield her from any lingering phantoms of a feeling gone by.

“How dare you apologize to me,” she says, then walks off without expecting a response—or anything else—from her brother.


End file.
